The relation of the frequency and distribution of sensory adjectives to the average perceptual strength hierarchy in some realistic and surrealistic contemporary Persian short stories

Abstract

AbstractThis research has been carried out using framework of Sensory Linguistics. The Sensory Linguistics examines the relationship between senses and language. It also deals with the issue of how and to what extent each language encodes sensory cognition and what difference languages may have in regard with sense encoding. In this research, we employed the average perceptual strength of the five senses, presented by Lynott and Connell (2009), to examin the frequency of sensory adjectives and the juxtaposition of nouns and sensory adjectives in five contemporary short stories of realisticistic style and four contemporary surrealistic short stories. It is to note that the stories in both groups of styles shad relatively equal word count (29406 words in sum). The results showed that the highest and lowest number of sensory adjectives both realisticistic and surrealistic styles pertain to the sense of sight and the sense of smell respectively. Interestingly, given these, the sight and smell senses constitute the two ends of a continuum in the middle of which fall the other three senses, namely hearing, touch and taste senses. Therefore, the hierarchy of Lynott and Connell (2009) applies to both styles with a difference in the position of the two senses of hearing and taste. But the number of sensory adjectives in all senses in the realistic style is significantly more than the surreal. This can be considered as a distinguishing component of the realistic style. Such being the case, it is interesting to note that the data and findings of the present study do not follow the same line as Lynott and Connell (2009) and Winter (2019) and therefor, can not provide enough justifications in support of the higher frequency of nouns and sensory adjectives of the same domain. Keywords: Sensory Linguistics, Hierarchy of Average Perceptual Strength, Five Senses, Sensory Senses IntroductionThe Sensory Linguistics (SL) examines the relationship between the senses and language. The senses are of great importance for human beings since they are significant ever existing media to gain experience from the environment. The knowledge acquired from the surrounding environment through the senses is stored in the mind under the name of knowledge. Language, as a medium that represents a part of human cognition, also plays a role in the senses, that is to say, part of our sensory cognition is realized through language (Miller and Johnson-Laird, 1976: 3; Kövecses, 2002:57). In this research, we recruited the average perceptual strength of five senses presented by Lynott and Connell (2009), to examin the frequency of sensory adjectives and the juxtaposition of nouns and sensory adjevtives in five contemporary short stories with realistic style and four contemporary surreal short stories. In this research, following the fivefold division of senses, we will try to provide justifiable answers to the following research questions:1- What is the frequency of adjectives related to the five senses in both realistic and surreal stories? 2- How does the frequency of adjectives align with the Lynott and Connell (2009) average perceptual strength of the five senses?3- What implications may the diffrences of sensory adjectives in both realistic andsurreal stories have? Materials and MethodsThe method of present research is descriptive-analytical. As for the data, we have chosen contemporary Persian short stories. Considering the wide range of words in the language, in this research, we only account for sensory adjectives in nine short stories including five realistic stories of and four surreal stories. In the present research, we have used literary texts as a source for extracting linguistic data to determine what sensory areas the authors have used the most in these stories and how names and sensory adjectives are juxtaposed. Given that the nine stories belonged to two different styles, we presented the number of the adjectives both in total and separate with respect to their styles. It is worth mentioning that in the first stage, repeated adjectives were counted only once; since the goal was to determine the sensory domain to which an adjective belongs. However, when we wanted to know the total number of sensory adjectives in the surreal short stories comparing to realistic short stories, all the occurences of the adjectives were counted, no matter repeated or not repeated. Discussion and ConclusionThe findings suggest the highest number of adjectives belonged to the sense of sight in both realistic and surreal styles and the number of smell sense adjectives was the least. The pairs of noun- adjective related to the sense of sight (sight-sight pairs) were more than other senses, and at the same time, the total number of sensory adjectives in the realistic style was significantly more than the surrealistic, which can be considered as a style-dependant feature.Considering the juxtaposition of nouns and sensory adjectives, two senses of sight and smell, which are practically at the two ends of the spectrum of average perceptual power, had the most and the least sensory noun-adjective juxtapositions in both styles, respectively. In other senses, the number of sensory juxtapositions in realistic style was more the surreal style. As much as the hierarchy of Lynott and Connell (2009) is considered, considering each column of juxtaposition for each sense separately, juxtapositions of the same domain are among the most frequent juxtapositions. Therefore, in the same line as with the opinion of Lynott and Connell (2009); Winter (2019), our findings prove that the number of juxtapositions of the same dominans are more than the juxtaposition of different domains. However, in case we compare all the columns of juxtaposition of different domains in each table with the column of juxtaposition of the same domain, then the number of cases of juxtaposition of different domains in three senses will be more than the juxtaposition of the same domain. It is only in the case of the sense of sight that the juxtapositions of the same domain are more than the juxtapositions of different domains. When it comes to the sense of touch, the juxtapositions of the same domain are equal with the the juxtapositions of different domains. Therefore, these findings do not support the postulations of Lynott and Connell (2009) and Winter (2019).

Keywords

• sensory linguistics
• hierarchy of average perceptual strength
• five senses
• sensory senses